Save Schenley High School from being closed

larry meyers · Joined: 12 Nov 2007 Posts: 2

My name is Larry Meyers. My children have been in Pittsburgh Public Schools since 1994, {a daughter who graduated from Schenley High School in 2006, and a son who is currently enrolled at Schenley as a junior.}

On Tuesday, 13 November, members of the Schenley community rallied here at the Board of Education to save our school. At the same time, across Forbes Avenue, esteemed architect David Lewis was being honored at Carnegie Mellon University for lifelong contributions in urban design. Would that the Board had heard his remarks, as well: �The shape of every city�s future is based on its heritages...the greatest strength of any city is its tradition and its local culture. Tradition is the bridge between the past and the future. Unlike history, tradition is open-ended, forward-looking, and perpetually unfinished. It is the vital language that citizens use when they relate local heritage to what they want their community to become in facing the challenges of change.�

This is the message that those of us in the Schenley community - students, parents, teachers, and alumni - are imploring Superintendent Roosevelt and the Board to comprehend. Schenley High School, located at the crossroads of the city�s richest educational and cultural neighborhood, and since 1916, the flagship of the district�s secondary academic mission, must remain open. The genius of its architecture fosters an environment of inquiry, cooperation, and commitment that is best reflected in the passion and enthusiasm of its students. As one Hill parent says, �keeping Schenley open is school reform.�

{With all due respect, superintendents come and go; school board administrations come and go; educational philosophies and theories of learning come and go. Schenley High School has stood on that hill in Oakland for nearly one hundred years as a beacon and place of welcome to generations of Pittsburgh students from neighborhoods all across the city.} Should the Board decide to close it, it will be lost forever, as will its local heritage, its national reputation in college and business recruiting offices, and its enduring potential for academic service to future generations.

We know we are facing an enormous �challenge of change,� but we must all be willing to work together creatively to find a way to sustain the legacy of what a current senior so eloquently described a month ago in this room as �the covenant of diversity� that thrives at Schenley High School, a school where all who enter, no matter what their background, are entrusted with the responsibility to learn and to serve.

Schenley High School is �the other golden triangle� in this town, and just like the one at the confluence, it deserves, come hell or high water, to be renewed, improved, and promoted.

Thank you.

(word count as written: 452

word count as read: 374

{bracketed} passages omitted)